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First T2 produced

Well things so far have been progressing ok. Trading activity is up, profits have been increasing slowly, and I managed to make my first T2 item. It turned out my T2 item produced wasn’t what I anticipated my first T2 item was going to be. But I can’t complain since I acted on a thought, and in the end made a good profit producing and eventually selling almost all of the batch of Mining Drones II.

A few days ago back when I had started to roll the Invention wheel I needed to make some EWar Drones from a BPC pack I had picked up in Jita a few days before. I was short some amount of minerals to make the drones I needed to make. So warped out to the local belt and went mining for the few extra minerals I needed. For a small amount of minerals that won’t take me too long to mine, I usually don’t mine mining it my self in my Retriever. Often the trip out to the mining belt to mine a few minerals is really a distraction for me to freely think about things and ideas or just browse the regional market while shooting lasers at rocks. Sometime read a few blogs.

I can’t remember what I was thinking about but was randomly browsing the market looking at stuff and somehow something I saw gave me a though. Out of curiosity I started looking at contracts market for a researched blueprint, and in the process found a contract to bid on to probably acquire. I figure the blueprint was selling at a deal and much below NPC price so was going to head to Forge Region after to bid on the contract. As well I kept looking curiously at contracts and saw some T2 copies of the same blueprint. I wasn’t really looking to buy a T2 blueprint however I came across a 100 run T2 print of the blueprint I was going to bid on contract for. If I was going to use the purchase print for invention it was also going to take me some days to make copies of to use, i’ll maybe pick up the T2 copy. The T2 blueprint cost about 10 million ISK. So I ran some numbers on my yellow sticky note pad and looked back at the regional market. I figure I could make a profit!

After a brief mining session and some thought, headed off to the Forge Region and Jita. Bid on the contract for the researched blueprint I wanted and also purchased on contracts a T2 100 run copy of the same blueprint. I figure whats the worst that can happen, I buy a blueprint for 10 million ISK, make the item and they don’t sell. Sometime you make ISK sometime you loose ISK. I’ll take the gamble.

Eventually got back to my region with the T2 blueprint. The other contract I eventually did won a few hours later. I looked at the T2 blueprint and proceeded to start making all the parts from scratch required to eventually make the drones. Had to manufacture several items from minerals and components including producing a batch of 100 T1 drones, some R.A.M components, something else I can’t remember and several hundred Robotics. Sent an order for the Robotics down to my PI factory planet to retool and start manufacturing several hundred Robotics. Whole process of making all the parts and components took several hours in the factory to about a day or so. Eventually had all the parts and then sent them all along with the T2 blueprint into the station factory to manufacture a batch of 100 Mining Drones II. I can’t remember how long that took but it was almost a day to manufacture all the drones.

The drones eventually came out the factory and was finally happy to have produced my very first T2 item a batch of Mining Drones II. That excitement was short-lived as I needed to make my money back. In the time it had took me to purchase the T2 blueprint, manufacture all the parts and components to make the drone a few people had dumped several drones on the market in the region. So was a little worried as was uncertain how well they would sell. I had already calculated my cost and what I was looking to sell them for to make back a profit. Instead of putting 100 new T2 drones on the market I just placed about a quarter of them on the market in my system and hauled a few to another station I also trade at in same region. Sold half of the drones a few hours later selling out all the drones I placed in my system. I was a bit surprised they had sold so fast. So placed the rest of the drones on the market.

Just a bit over 2 days later, sold 95 of the 100 Mining Drones II produced. Not only did I make all my ISK back for all the materials including the cost of the T2 print, but also made a modest 37 million ISK profit also. Not bad for producing my first T2 item from scratch. I as well had fun with the whole process of making the drones for my first T2 product.

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9 comments

I think I’m going to get into some more manufacturing – I’m not getting many kills lately, and it’s something different. Passive income from PI (crap, forgot to update last night) is ok, and I’ve always been interested in market stuff.

If Manufacturing is something you also enjoy then you can try it out and hopefully making something profitable that you can also sell. As to loose money having manufactured something is not fun for the effort. It does take some work. But its a optional way to make some ISK.

I’ve been trying to find a way to use manufacturing to help boost my income from mining. Unfortunately, everything i look at seems to result in LESS money than if I just sell the minerals after refining them (I’m currently refining at 100% yield).

Are there a set of skills that you’d recommend picking up that would get manufacturing to be profitable?

I guess if your a Miner then the Manufacturing side of Industry is a easy progression to get into. Especially since you mine the very material it takes to make almost all T1 stuff. T2 Manufacturing is much more skill intensive and complicated.

Mining is fairly easy and straight forward in that you mine ore, easily refine it and sell minerals on market as everyone needs minerals to make whatever. Sometime and often its just easy and less hassle to just sell your mineral for whoever needs to buy it.

With Manufacturing the point of it all really is to make something with the minerals that you can clearly make a profit selling the item made. Making a profit over and above the price of the minerals on a item made that also sells so that it was worth the effort.

The thing is you as the manufacturer have to calculate you own costs to figure out how much it cost to make stuff from whatever BPO/BPC you use and above what price you make a profit. The point is to make a profit not loose money or sell the stuff you made below the cost of the minerals used.

For manufacturing you really want to have Production Efficiency 5 trained to reduce mineral waste/cost of manufacturing anything. You also want to use good ME/PE Researched BPO/BPC to reduce the mineral cost/time of making the item from the blueprint. The more you can reduce the cost/time to make things, the more potential profit if you can sell the item at a profitable price.

There are a few caveats to those lists:
1. it assumes you have no trouble getting the required items to build stuff
2. it assumes you can afford the blueprint
3. it assumes you can sell everything you make (you can learn to read the list to determine how many sellers a product can support)

Congrats on the successful inventions and manufacturing. T2 things are great, but as I’m sure you’re finding out it can be a bit of a pain trying to play the market and guage which direction it’s going in.

Unlike T1, T2 can usually be surprisingly profitable – however you also need to do your research to spot who’s manufacturing using a T2 BPO, as they usually tend to build below cost (see some of the T2 small drones in Jita for example).

The only thing with T2 is that you have to “tool up” a manufacturing line, as you found, and this can include your PI too, as you found! If the market suddenly gets a massive influx of your chosen T2 product (e.g. a freighter full of Expanded Cargohold II’s arriving), you can suddenly be left fighting a 0.01 ISK war which is frustrating, slows you sales dramatically and certainly reduces your profits. This can then take you a bit of time to react to “re-tool” your manufacturing line.

So far so good on Inventing T2 BPC’s. Yet its very much a learning process and i’m taking steps just learning things as i go all the time. As well as seeing where there are things that can cause problems. Trying to time the market is quite tricky and not sure if i’ll be successful to anticipate its direction with modules all the time with all the complexities of things happening in EVE.

I’ve figured many T2 modules are profitable, some smaller T2 ships don’t appear to be. Yeah, I’m somewhat now aware of the T2 BPO’s on the market and how hard it will be to compete with those. I’ve even seen some their BPC copies on contract. Will just try best i can as i come to it producing things. But profit still to be made though.

I’ve been looking at some the T2 BPC’s that i’ve invented just rolling through my thoughts and really does seem like a process to tool up to be able to smooth manufacture various things. A bit more work than just making the basic T1 item.